Ebook Tell-All Azw3 Tác Giả Chuck Palahniuk

Introduction of the ebook: Tell-All

Đánh giá : 2.87 /5 (sao)

The hyperactive love child of Page Six and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? caught in a tawdry love triangle with The Fan. Even Kitty Kelly will blush.

Soaked, nay, marinated in the world of vintage Hollywood, Tell-All is a Sunset Boulevard–inflected homage to Old Hollywood when Bette Davis and Joan Crawford ruled the roost; a veritable Tourette’s syndrome of rat-tat-tat n The hyperactive love child of Page Six and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? caught in a tawdry love triangle with The Fan. Even Kitty Kelly will blush.

Soaked, nay, marinated in the world of vintage Hollywood, Tell-All is a Sunset Boulevard–inflected homage to Old Hollywood when Bette Davis and Joan Crawford ruled the roost; a veritable Tourette’s syndrome of rat-tat-tat name-dropping, from the A-list to the Z-list; and a merciless send-up of Lillian Hellman’s habit of butchering the truth that will have Mary McCarthy cheering from the beyond.

Our Thelma Ritter–ish narrator is Hazie Coogan, who for decades has tended to the outsized needs of Katherine “Miss Kathie” Kenton—veteran of multiple marriages, career comebacks, and cosmetic surgeries. But danger arrives with gentleman caller Webster Carlton Westward III, who worms his way into Miss Kathie’s heart (and boudoir). Hazie discovers that this bounder has already written a celebrity tell-all memoir foretelling Miss Kathie’s death in a forthcoming Lillian Hellman–penned musical extravaganza; as the body count mounts, Hazie must execute a plan to save Katherine Kenton for her fans—and for posterity.

Tell-All is funny, subversive, and fascinatingly clever. It’s wild, it’s wicked, it’s boldfaced—it’s vintage Chuck. …more

Review ebook Tell-All

This guy wrote a review of this book that is wrong.

This is not a good novel. I don’t even know where to start on it.

I imagine this conversation happening between CP and his editor:

CP: Did you get my new novel?

ED: Novel? I got your short story.

CP: Oh, you kidder. Seriously, what do you think?

ED: Chuck, you can’t release this as a novel. It’s 150 pages, but the plot only takes up about 15 of those pages. This is a short story.

CP: My fans are retards though, they will think it’s edgy. I can do an This guy wrote a review of this book that is wrong.

This is not a good novel. I don’t even know where to start on it.

I imagine this conversation happening between CP and his editor:

CP: Did you get my new novel?

ED: Novel? I got your short story.

CP: Oh, you kidder. Seriously, what do you think?

ED: Chuck, you can’t release this as a novel. It’s 150 pages, but the plot only takes up about 15 of those pages. This is a short story.

CP: My fans are retards though, they will think it’s edgy. I can do anything!!!!

ED: Your probably right. I’ve got an idea why don’t you namedrop another 30 pages of semi-obscure golden age Hollywood stars into the text. I think we can work with it then.

CP: Consider it done, my man!

For about the first 105 pages of the book there is nothing that happens that is really necessary to the plot. For a good portion of the pages after that there is nothing necessary to the plot. And actually the plot isn’t really all that different from Diary.

As a short story this would have been vaguely entertaining with a pretty transparent ironic twist.

Which brings me to the name dropping. It is pointless. Somewhere along the line CP thought it would be cute to throw in excessive extraneous garbage into his books. It’s a weird verbal tick of sorts. And it makes his books seem weirder than they really are. Actually they are sort of a crutch that lets him automatically create the obsessive characters he is known for without having to do much work. Which is good for him, since he chugs out a book a year. In Fight Club it was the “I am Jacks (x)”, which was fine. In Survivor it was the endless cleaning tips, which were quirky and worked well in the novel, but I think became the crutch at this point. In Diary it was the endless cribbings from Grey’s Anatomy. Here it is the nonstop name dropping (and putting those names in BOLD), as if he were just running down a list off of Wikipedia for 1940’s and 50’s stars.

But isn’t this a seething critique of celebrity culture and our obession with the gossip rags? No. Unless you are 12 and haven’t realized that the whole celebrity thing is vulturistic, then there is nothing really going on here. If anything it is just adding even more to the cult of celebrity. Ironically gushing over celebrities is still gushing.

All of this is fine to say, but really the big problem with the book is that it is BORING! It is tedious and BORING! BORING, as in nothing really happens. BORING, as in I enjoyed reading the nutritional information off of the bag of pretzels I ate at lunch today more than reading anything in this book. BORING, as in it wasn’t even bad enough to warrant one star it was just this BORING, BLAH, MEDIOCRE thing of BLANDNESS; sort of like most of the celebrities out there today.

…more